The Champion's Guide To Amulet Titan

Who Are You?

Hello, everyone! My name is William Pulliam. At the beginning of 2018 I made it my goal to play in the majority of SCG Tour® events and finish the year with two byes. With four Top 8s and one win this year, I may actually reach that goal.

Last weekend I took home my first trophy playing a deck most people did not expect to win the event, Amulet Titan.

What Is Amulet Titan?

Amulet is a Ramp / Toolbox deck at its core. This deck's primary gameplan is to use the original Ravnica bouncelands alongside Amulet of Vigor and ways to play additional lands such as Azusa, Lost but Seeking; Sakura-Tribe Scout; and Explore to generate mana and cast Primeval Titan, which unlocks a complicated toolbox of various utility lands to interact with your opponent. It may not look like it, but Amulet Titan actually has the tools to get itself out of a lot of tough scenarios.

Why Play Amulet Titan?

Amulet Titan has not been popular since the banning of Summer Bloom, yet has popped its head up from time to time while being called a Tier 2 deck. But this last weekend the deck put up an impressive showing with an Amulet Titan mirror in the finals.

Amulet Titan is overwhelmingly complex, which makes it very intimidating to pick up and learn. But if you do put in the hours to learn the deck, it can be one of the best decks in Modern. Amulet is one of the few decks with a good matchup against Humans, Tron, and Dredge, which makes it a great choice in the current Modern metagame. The deck also has the ability to kill on Turn 3 and sometimes even as early as Turn 2. This is rare, but the occasional busted draw can bail you out if you do play one of your few bad matchups (which I will list in the sideboard guide below).

I decided pretty late into the week to play Amulet Titan after a long hiatus, so I went with a somewhat stock list built by an Amulet Titan expert, Edgar Maghalaes.

Sideboard

I think this is the best version of Amulet Titan at the moment. The maindeck felt perfect and the sideboard had everything I wanted outside of maybe a second copy of Tireless Tracker.

Card Choices

Zacama, Primal Calamity: I choose not play Zacama because I do not think it is needed. It is very expensive and realistically only good after you cast a Primeval Titan, and at that point you should be winning anyway.

Maindeck Reclamation Sage: This card is an underrated bullet and deserves to be in the maindeck. There are a ton of nonsense artifacts and enchantments you can hit with it even in Game 1s.

The Lands: My manabase is pretty stock and the only thing I have different from most people is that I am not playing Selesnya Sanctuary. This lack can be annoying at times, but being able to cast Firespout and Abrade on time is more important in my mind.

This was previously a good matchup for Amulet Titan, but with the inclusion of Assassin's Trophy the matchup is much closer. If you want this matchup to be favorable, register more copies of Tireless Tracker.

Khalni Garden is one of the best things you can search for with Primeval Titan to prevent your Titan from dying to Liliana of the Veil's -2 ability.

This matchup is a little bit more difficult than Humans. They have impactful creatures at both two and three mana, which makes Engineered Explosives worse. Sometimes they can present a very fast clock with a Selfless Spirit up, which you have trouble beating. They also have a ton of great sideboard options such as Disdainful Stroke and Damping Sphere.

If your opponent has a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, you can announce that you are casting Engineered Explo-sives for one. After you pay for the Thalia tax and pay two different colors of mana, Engineered Explosives will have two charge counters.

Mulligan Decisions

Against an unknown opponent, don't keep hands that do not accelerate you. Your deck has plenty of ways to find Primeval Titan, and you are much better off keeping hands that accelerate you with no payoff than hands that are slow.

Conclusion

Amulet Titan is a great choice to attack the current Modern metagame. Amulet will continue to be a great choice until people give it the respect it deserves, and the most effective way to attack Amulet Titan is on the deck registration sheet.

About Will Pulliam

Will Pulliam is an SCG Tour player making a name for himself with a strong 2018. With 4 Top 8s and 1 Win across Modern and Legacy with four different decks, Will has shown his ability to find holes in the metagames of Eternal formats. He is notorious for strange archetypes that involve land strategies.